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Consolidated federal funds.

Article Excerpt
Never ask of money spent, where the spender thinks it went. Nobody was ever meant, to remember or invent What he did with every cent.

Robert Frost (1)

Introduction

Federal government expenditures for federal fiscal year 2004 were $2.2 trillion. That's Trillion with twelve zeros, $2,200,000,000,000. This amount does not cover all expenditures by the federal government; another $1 Trillion was spent for loans and insurance programs.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is responsible for tracking federal expenditures and obligations. The OMB contracts with the U.S. Census Bureau "to collect funding data from federal departments and agencies, organize it, and make it available to the public." (2)

Who tracks the funds? How much of these funds does South Dakota receive? This paper will describe Consolidated Federal Funds (CFF), how to access the data, review federal spending in South Dakota and each county, and compare South Dakota with bordering states.

Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR) The CFFR Web site, http:// www.census.gov/govs/www/ cffr.html offers data, documentation, and reports for viewing or downloading. The data are presented in several ways:

(1) Viewable and downloadable summary tables for the United States and for individual states,

(2) Publication data on federal government expenditures or obligations,

(3) County aggregate files, and

(4) Detailed data files with item coded data at the state/county/ place level.

The CFFR is prepared annually by the United States Bureau of the Census. It is part of a series of reports on the geographic distribution of federal spending. The CFFR data are obtained from numerous federal government agencies and describe federal government expenditures or obligations in state and county areas of the United States, the District of Columbia, and United States territories. The current report "reveals expenditures for the Department of Homeland Security, the first full year that this data has been included, and the Defense Department. (3)" The first edition of the CFFR was published in federal fiscal year (FFY) 1983.

The chart at the top of page 4 shows the amount of funds spent, in billions of dollars, in 2004, by object code. Object codes are used by the government to describe what kind of fund it is. General descriptions of object codes are (4):

* Direct Loans--This category includes the Department of Agriculture (commodity loans--price supports and other) and federal direct student loans, which is the largest category.

* Direct Payments for Individuals for Retirement & Disability--This category includes Social Security payments (retirement insurance, survivors insurance, disability insurance, and supplemental security income payments), which are the largest payments; federal retirement and disability benefits (civilian and military), and veterans' benefits.

* Direct Payments Other than for Retirement & Disability--This category includes Medicare benefits (hospital insurance, supplemental medical insurance), excess earned income tax credits, unemployment compensation, food stamp payments, housing assistance,...